As his year leading Rotarians in Cumbria and Lancashire comes to an end, Kevin Walsh of Brampton & Longtown Rotary Club announced that funding has been approved to provide life saving defibrillators to local communities alongside training and equipment for search and rescue teams.
The £65,000 investment includes match funding from the Rotary Foundation charity with the rest coming from local Rotary clubs and Rotary colleagues in Japan, Bangalore and South East Scotland.
Rotarians are now working with the North West Ambulance Service, search and rescue organisations and the National Forum for Health and Wellbeing to implement various projects.
Kevin said: “It has been a privilege to lead and support the 71 Rotary clubs in Cumbria and Lancashire over the last 12 months and the award of funding for our community based first response projects is a fitting end to the year. It is unusual for funding on such a scale to be made available locally as most of our grants are used to support activities in the developing world. There are needs in all of our communities and I believe the more we do locally the more people will want to help us by joining a Rotary club or supporting our service activity and fund raising efforts.”
Andrew Redgrave of the North West Ambulance Service Trust said: “We are working to place Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) in as many places as possible to help improve survival rates from sudden out of hospital cardiac arrests. We are extremely pleased to be working with local Rotarians to provide AEDs in communities where they will be most effective.”
